Nanda's Alarm Clock Not Only Runs Away From You, It Runs Away From eBay Too

from the wake-up-nanda dept

It looks like more tangible product companies are trying to pretend they can restrict what you do with legally purchased products post-sale (perhaps they're jealous of content companies). Case in point: my brother received the Nanda Clocky as a gift awhile back -- it's a pretty novel alarm clock, when it goes off, its wheels turn on, and it jumps off your dresser, forcing you to climb out of bed to turn it off. Since he already had an alarm clock that worked for him, he decided to sell it on eBay. A few days before his auction was supposed to close, he got a notice that his listing was removed for a "Trademark Violation - Unauthorized Item." Yes, for a legitimately owned product. The email stated:

"Nanda Home Inc. is the owner of the intellectual property rights pertaining to these listings. By listing the 'Clocky' product you are in serious violation of the company's rights. Additionally, Nanda Home does not permit the re-sale of any of their brand product on eBay. There are no authorized Nanda Home re-sellers on eBay. If you continue to list our items, further legal action may be taken."

Clearly, Nanda has a gross misunderstanding of the right of people to re-sell their own property. While it's true that it is against the law to sell counterfeit copies of a product, re-selling your own goods and representing them as "real" is completely within the bounds of the law, and eBay policy. To make matters worse, the condescending tone of the email also suggests that:

"You may need to take a tutorial. The next time you sell, you may be asked to take the tutorial, if it's required. Once you've completed the tutorial successfully, please review your account status for any other possible concerns. If there are no other issues, you should be able to sell again."

Or, perhaps Nanda and eBay should take a tutorial on the right of first sale. In the aforementioned tutorial, eBay clearly understands the right to re-sell (in fact, a huge part of its business relies upon this fact). Yet, to make matters worse under eBay policy it's still a laborious process to get the item relisted -- even with the bogus takedown notice. As a seller of an incorrectly taken down Clocky listing, you have to contact Nanda and have them specifically authorize your product to be re-listed. Yes, even though it's Nanda who issued the incorrect takedown in the first place. So much for frictionless commerce.

The even bigger problem is in the process in which such listing takedowns are handled. Under the guise of rooting out counterfeit products, Nanda is able to unfairly reduce the number of its own secondhand goods in the marketplace. Other manufacturers have tried to do this in the past for everything from shampoo to radar detectors. And, much like the DMCA process, this "guilty until proven innocent" approach ultimately hurts the consumer, who now has unfairly reduced access to many products that were to be sold completely legally.

That said, my brother followed the eBay process to get his Clocky relisted. They sent him an email apologizing for their error and authorizing him to relist, which he did. Guess what? In an effort to punctuate how ridiculous this policy is, one day later, he got an email, "Trademark Violation - Unauthorized Item."

Re: re

Craigslist is great if you are in a large city but it's not very good anywhere else. eBay has lots of problems and it screws both the buyer and the seller but there is nowhere else that you can get a worldwide audience. While no one in your particular area may want what your selling all you need is someone on planet earth that wants it. I wish Craigslist would really compete with eBay and go globa.

Your brother does need a tutorial, Mike.

Not for the laws of reselling, but a tutorial on selling practices which don't include eBay.

I'm glad issues like this plague eBay, as more and more people are finally realizing how crap this "service" is to any consumer. Eventually, this site will fail. It's just a matter of time.

Tell your brother to use Craigslist. It's 100% free and very successful. I've watched this service explode with users who have finally had enough of eBays "terms of services".

But as a favor, don't push your brother's items on us. No, I don't want a clocky. I'm one who positioned the clock far away enough as to warrant a removal from my bed to walk over and shut it off. Cost: $0.

The Legal Shotgun

This post reiterates that those who claim to somehow "own" content (whether the claim is legitimate or not) will simply whip out their shotgun of legalize verbiage to intimidate the public into compliance.

This is common practice by ebay, and the businesses that have these IP accounts with ebay. All the businesses have to do is find a listing that they do not like, and then send an email to ebay, and voila, the listing is gone.

I never have used ebay to sell a product, now I never will. So much for the "freedom" the internet gives. About 10 years ago I (and probably millions of other people) saw the writing on the wall. Over time even though the Internet came from tax paper funding for a majority (see: ARPA), I saw the coming waves of the corporations. These corporations, I thought then, would one day completely take over the once "free exchange" of ideas, open-source vaules, of the internet, and turn it into one big online buisness.
This is exhibit 1 billion of this happening (a rough estimate to be sure). The Internet, like all good ideas, has been largely co-opted by corporate profit taking, and copyright abuse. FUN times.....

Re:

I never have used ebay to sell a product, now I never will. So much for the "freedom" the internet gives. About 10 years ago I (and probably millions of other people) saw the writing on the wall. Over time even though the Internet came from tax paper funding for a majority (see: ARPA), I saw the coming waves of the corporations. These corporations, I thought then, would one day completely take over the once "free exchange" of ideas, open-source vaules, of the internet, and turn it into one big online buisness.
This is exhibit 1 billion of this happening (a rough estimate to be sure). The Internet, like all good ideas, has been largely co-opted by corporate profit taking, and copyright abuse. FUN times.....

Plenty of clockys (clockies?) available

Is eBay really the villain here?

I find it amusing that the vast majority of comments here have been bashing eBay. Why aren't people more upset that Nanda is sending out improper trademark infringement letters? Trying to limit who can resell their legitimately purchased products seems pretty dastardly to me. I would love to see a communication from them to see what their company line is.

Re: Is eBay really the villain here?

Why aren't people more upset that Nanda is sending out improper trademark infringement letters?
Simply because eBay should be the first defense for its customers and block such bullshit from ever hitting their inbox.

Nanda may be tactless in its quest, but it's even *more* tactless for eBay to circumvent its own ToS in order to comply with Nanda's idiocy.

Thus, it's why many are hell bent on blaming eBay, rather than the all-too-common idiocy of Nanda.

Re: Is eBay really the villain here?

@Aaron,

Because while Nanda is certainly guilty of a lack of intelligence, tha fact that Ebay condones and supports this sort of action is truly egregious. Nanda can bend over so we can shove the clock up their a%^, but Ebay should absolutely know better than to give this action any leg to stand on.

Re: Is eBay really the villain here?

Who do you blame, the whining bratty kid who stamps his foot and demands to have his way, or the adult who caves in to the emotional blackmail? Yes, Nanda should get a clue and grow up, but they have only their own interest to look after. eBay's primary responsibility is to its customers, and they're shirking that responsibility. eBay needs to grow a pair and tell Nanda, and other such blustering bullies, to get stuffed.

Re: wait a sec...

Re: wait a sec...

After sending a challenge to ebay on the takedown notice and getting the item re-listed, doesn't some burden of proof then fall on Clocky people before they can reissue a take down for the same item?

That is exactly where the problem lies. While the burden of proof should be placed on Nanda to prove that there is some actual infringement, eBay's policy is that the burden of proof is on the person who posted the item to prove that they are not infringing. They then compound the bad policy by allowing the same listing to then be challenged again by the trademark holder, putting the burden of proof again on the person who posted the listing.

Report to watchdog

I came across a similar issue with terms of service of an online merchant. Specifically, you were allowed to re-sell something you brought from them. I reported them to the UK Consumer watchdog and the result was the company changed it terms of service.

Would reporting both Nanda and eBay to the US equivalent (Better Business Bureau or the FTC?) help? It is a violation of consumer rights.

Similar problem

My friend had a similar problem with selling some speakers he got for free on newegg when he bought some other speakers. He wanted matching housings so he bought new ones that matched and ebay pulled his listing with the same message.

The only thing I can think of is either the company whined about the pictures used or they are just abusing the DMCA.

I suggested he take pictures himself with his user ID in the picture so the company can't claim copyright on anything.

Listing fees

I see the comments here all the time about how the internet has gone corporate, and that is no lie. I first connected to the internet in 1993 and have been on a roll ever since. I have watched the change roll over the whole landscape. So the point of this comment is, instead of everyone just complaining about the problems, why are we not doing anything about it? Just in the United States a good 30% have connections to the internet, out of those maybe 25% have the knowledge to know what is actually going on and if even 1% of those users would do something, voice their opinion, call their congressman, 1,000,000 voices could be heard. But that will not happen, people can not cooperate long enough to pull something like that off. This actually does not need to be done just for the Internet, there are so many areas of our society where we are getting totally stomped on by large corporations and the government. What is it going to take to get the people to move as a single entity to get these problems taken care of?

Re: intersting math

Just in the United States a good 30% have connections to the internet, out of those maybe 25% have the knowledge to know what is actually going on and if even 1% of those users would do something, voice their opinion, call their congressman, 1,000,000 voices could be heard.

By that math the U.S. has 1.3 billion people. I had no idea that we more than quadrupled our population overnight.

Re: Re: Re: intersting math

Well, you missed the part where he said of the 30% that have internet connections, 25% know what is going on. That 25% part wuadruples the number again. Here is his exact statement again:
"Just in the United States a good 30% have connections to the internet, out of those maybe 25% have the knowledge to know what is actually going on and if even 1% of those users would do something, voice their opinion, call their congressman, 1,000,000 voices could be heard."

@Alex Hagen: Care to tell me who the hell you are dimwit?
STFU. I have more education in my feces than you have in your whole sorry-excuse for a brain. Now you were saying?
Also STFU for answering for someone elese, sarcasm, idiocy, or else all being put aside.

First, he's a profiled member. His name was Chris. I didn't have a problem with Chris, I assumed he was joking, or making commentary somehow, and I get it. That's actually pretty funny. I don't hate technology (big hint: this post), I just never found it worth my time to use ebay. Considering I bought my current vehicle off of craig's list, I know that there are alternatives to ebay. I just hate what greed does to good things. Thanks AC. The problem I had was with the person calling themselves Alex Hagen. Probably a troll, but even if trying to be funny, it wasn't.
Caught me on the wrong day......

@btr1701: Oh yeah. I remember when Khan when back to the woods on his home planet...silly me. Also, we all know that a TV sitcom with pop culture references about socially-ill adjusted individuals is the height of modern education...

If this had happened to me

I would have sued the PANTS off the company in question and eBay...... the right of first-sale is NEVER TO BE INFRINGED, period and done with. The only time that it comes into play is if someone is selling something that is clearly marked not for resale.... and even then, the doctrine of first sale still applies, as judges have been saying lately.

From the Creators of Clocky

We promptly contacted Dennis Yang after reading his article on our company. Our apologies for the confusion caused by the original message we sent to Ebay resellers. This message was intended for those resellers that are selling counterfeit Clockies, violating our copyright, patent and trademark rights. We were in no way trying to obstruct legal re-selling of our product. We understand that there are legitimate Clocky's on Ebay purchased through lawful means and we have edited our message to avoid any confusion in the future. If you have any questions, feel free to connect with us at service@nandahome.com
- Nanda Home Team.